Working Forests and Working Farms
Equals Open Space

by Charles Webb, Registered Forester
July 2000

If we are to implement workable public policies to protect "open space", we must recognize certain realities:

1. If the "million-acre" program is to have a significant effect on protecting open space in urban and near-urban areas, the enabling legislation must specify that development rights be purchased in urban and near-urban areas. This will be expensive on a per-acre basis. If this is not specified, the majority of the funds will be spent on properties in rural and deep-rural areas, because the available funds will cover more acres of less valuable land.

2. Working forests that are profitable to their owners will remain in forest longer in every locale: near-urban, and rural. Profitable working forests are similar to profitable working farms in that crops are harvested (on forests by logging) and new crops are regenerated for the future. Regeneration of new forest crops for the future is an integral part of a working forest. This makes logging as part of a continuing forestry program entirely different from land clearing for development.

3. When farms and forests cease to provide adequate revenue to their owners, then pressure increases for their owners to find more profitable uses, namely residential building sites and shopping centers.

Profitable working farms and profitable working forests are essential components of the high quality of life that we enjoy in North Carolina. In addition to providing an aesthetically pleasing landscape, working forests, just like working farms, pay property taxes (which support schools). Their profits pay income taxes (State and Federal) and provide jobs for owners and for the community in general.

Harvest of timber crops by logging followed by regeneration of new crops for the future is an integral part of the working forest concept. Periodic harvest provides greater biodiversity, which provides habitat for a wider diversity of wildlife. Locking up forests by a no-harvest attitude to "preserve the forest" will not provide the vegetational diversity required for the diversity of wildlife that we want.

The foundation of a rational, science-based forest policy must be the premise that different situations deserve different prescriptions; one prescription cannot serve all needs. As part of such a policy, certain rare and fragile areas must be preserved (c.f. Hemlock Bluffs in Cary and Umstead Park), but other areas can be managed for a wide variety of forest benefits, including both timber harvest and emotionally satisfying recreational experiences. In the Triangle area, we have three excellent examples of working forests that provide these multiple forest benefits: Schenck Forest in West Raleigh, Duke Forest in Durham, and Hill Forest north of Durham. In all three cases, a sustained and diverse forest is maintained by judicial application of partial harvests in the appropriate areas, harvest by clearcut in the appropriate areas, followed by planting or natural regeneration, and the absence of harvest in the appropriate areas. In addition to being outdoor classrooms and laboratories, the revenues generated support educational programs at N.C. State University and Duke University. Prescribed fire is used on a regular basis to enhance forest growth and wildlife habitat. Consequently, the wildlife on these forests is quite diverse. Recreational use of all three of these forests is very intense, which supports the premise that it is possible to have an emotionally satisfying recreational experience in a working forest.

We need to support public policies that recognize that profitable working forests are just as important to quality of life in North Carolina as profitable working farms.

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